The 47th Annual Blockbooster goes online

The 47th Annual Blockbooster commenced where teams of freshmen from the College of Engineering tested their wits for 2 days of intense competition to win 25,000 pesos worth of prizes. This prestigious event took place last March 30-31, 2021 via Zoom in order to provide the freshmen with an avenue to have fun and take a break from the stresses of the pandemic and online classes.

This year’s edition of Blockbooster was different from the traditional Blockbooster, as it was fully held online for the first time in its 47 years of existence. The challenges of an online setup did not hinder the Beta Epsilon Fraternity from delivering an event for the freshman of the College of Engineering.

The steering committee of the 47th Annual Blockbooster was led by Albert Jhames Maulion BE ‘20 and Richard Piolo Pablo BE ‘20 which is composed of resident brods putting together all the work and effort for the different deliverables in publicity and promotional materials, partnerships, puzzles and questions in the event proper.

This event would not be possible without the partner organizations that helped to execute the plans laid for this year's Blockbooster. The event was co-presented by the UP Engineering Freshie Council and brought by The UP Association of Civil Engineering Students.

The 47th Annual Blockbooster was made more exciting as an additional event was included for the elimination round beside the traditional “quiz about anything under the sun.” The first day of the competition is the elimination round which happened on 30th of March, 2021 composed of puzzles ranging from easy to difficult while the second day of the competition commenced on 31st of March, serving as the final round, composed of the traditional format of Blockbooster as a quiz about anything under the sun.

The puzzles on the first day consisted of common games such as crossword, word search, word scapes, and a unique take on the numerical game “Sudoku”. An elaborate Google Sheet was also sent out to the participants to answer. The online excel file had 5 mini-puzzles to solve to understand the last puzzle; the puzzles being Chess, layout, Spotify, cypher, plain sight, and binary themed. The contestants were amazed at the intricacy of the Google Sheet puzzles based on the feedback of the participants. They didn’t expect such an immersive experience from a site that’s commonly used to crunch numbers.

On the other hand, participants rated the Worscapes puzzle as the most difficult in the set since the Wordscape puzzle in the set is best answered with trial and error. This puzzle puts the most time consumed on almost every team interviewed. Overall, the contestants not only honed their problem-solving skills but also enjoyed the first day of Blockbooster because of the puzzles.

After the first day of the competition, eight (8) strongest puzzle-solving teams remained to take their chance to bring home the grand prize of PHP 10,000 for the Overall Champion, 6,000 for the 1st Runner up, and PHP 3,000 for the 2nd Runner up.

The second day was all about head-to-head team battles. Careful planning was done to ensure that a site to be the best in terms of efficiency, speed, and promotion. The quiz bee was held using the platform, Quizizz. The quiz is delivered in real-time and automatically scores the quiz bee participants based on the speed of their answers. In addition, the quiz bee highlights remarkable facts about the UP Beta Epsilon Fraternity in between questions ensuring all contestants answer at the same speed. At the end of the 47th Annual Blockbooster, three victorious teams emerged from the eight teams from the elimination round. The team, engg bb ghorlz is the Champion of the 47th Annual Blockbooster, followed by Team Dom Doms Supporters as the first runner up, and Infinity bois v2 as the second runner up.

Several online puzzles have also tested the wits of the freshman as mind-boggling puzzles were set up as a teaser for the event. Prizes such as loads and Gcash were given away to the lucky winners of the raffle for those who have participated in the promotional event.

The final day of Blockbooster was wrapped up by the awarding ceremony of the winners of the 2-day event and online promotional events on Facebook.

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